The Phuket News (Thaïlande)

Propose whilst orbiting the moon for a mere $145m.

Traditionally an engagement ring of sufficient value to show your commitment to a future partner was deemed to cost three months’ pay. Yikes! Well, prepare to ‘level up’ to entice your loved one to accept your romantic advances.

Starting in 2022 it will be possible to ask for the beloved’s hand-in-marriage whilst flying over the lunar surface to the sound of Frank Sinatra’s "Fly Me to the Moon”. The one-week interplanetary flight will be carried out using a self-contained and autonomous spacecraft allowing the two lovers to travel alone.

The Apoteo Surprise agency, a French marriage proposal planner who specialises in creating extravagant proposals (now there’s an understatement), introduces a whole new service, exclusively yours for a spare $145 million dollars which will allow 21st century handsome princes or beautiful princesses to propose whilst flying around the Moon. Reaching for the Moon in the name of love is about to become a reality.

You will quite literally take off together from the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida. One can assume a rather rocky start…but then, autonomously and alone in the spacecraft, you will then travel more than 500,000 kilometres in space during an epic journey to the Moon, close to the epochal 1968 Apollo 8 mission. Reaching the orbiting rock, the stage is then set for the most amazing and spectacular marriage proposal of all. My advice - Try to lay off the bubbles on the journey for fear of snoozing through the big moment.

Now of course whilst it’s certainly an extravagant show of affection, I presume it’s going to be a bit of a job to keep it a surprise. After medical exams and a physical condition assessment, the pair will then have assisted training for three months by aerospace professionals: cardio training sessions, high-G training in a centrifuge, acclimation to microgravity through a series of parabolic flights on board a Boeing 727, acclimation to high accelerations and speed changes on board a fighter jet flying over Mach 2, complete presentation of the spaceship and of the flight schedule, stress management strategies and emergency simulations. Hmm, not quite so romantic, and I think you’ll have some explaining to do.

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On the big day you’ll reach Cape Canaveral and the launch pad, wearing a space suit (yep, the cat’s out of the bag) ensuring your safety in the event of a cabin depressurisation. How cute.

So now you’re ready for the, er, surprise. Strapped to your seats, you'll wait for the countdown.

The rocket will take off and you will feel the most intense sensations of your life. I would, however, refrain from explaining it quite like that to your partner to be. With an acceleration of 3G, the first minutes will be challenging, but soon, the first stage of the rocket will separate. Separate already?

Soon you’ll catch sight of the Earth and you and the plus one will be jettisoned into the ether at more than 38,000 kilometres per hour.

And finally, after nearly three days of whiling away the hours in a zero gravity embrace and a candle-less dinner through a straw, you’ll be orbiting around the ash satellite, and will fly over the surface at an altitude of only 200-300 kilometres.

The spaceship will slow down, and to take ‘intimate’ to the extreme, you can even propose on the hidden face of the Moon, and not a chance of a paparazzi in sight. To calm the nerves before popping the question all communication with the Earth will be lost, and now totally alone in space you will be ready to propose to your beloved.

“Fly me to the Moon” by Frank Sinatra will be played in your headset, really, and then you can pull the engagement ring out of the box that you’ve secretly hidden in your space suit. Good luck with that. While the lunar craters continue to pass under your feet your exhausted partner will muster all the strength they have left to look surprised.

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The spacecraft will then attempt a return to Earth over a lazy few days, during which time you can relax and enjoy the last sensations of weightlessness and cosmic tranquility. Let’s just hope they say ‘Yes’. It’s going to be an awkward few days if your $145m extravaganza didn’t close the deal.